


From This Day Forward

by Illiad_And_Oddity



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Season 8? Never heard of her!, Secret Santa, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 22:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17129624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illiad_And_Oddity/pseuds/Illiad_And_Oddity
Summary: Shiro and Keith wanted a small wedding.  Unfortunately, that's pretty much out of the question for two of the most public faces of the Voltron Coalition.But they can still find a way for their special day to be about them.





	From This Day Forward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chinarai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chinarai/gifts).



> This is a Secret Santa gift for chi, who asked for "anything fluffy with lots of feelings."
> 
> Hope this fits the bill! (Also, I totally have honeymoon fic ideas, but this was already getting very close to the wordcount limit, so I'm saving them for a sequel.)
> 
> Merry Christmas!

It didn’t make sense that Shiro had gone into battles where he’d be facing almost certain death with less nerves than he had right now, trying to prepare for his own wedding. He would be marrying Keith in a little less than six hours in a ceremony that would be about five hundred times bigger and more elaborate than either of them would have chosen.

Unfortunately, a small wedding was pretty much out of the question for two of the most public faces of the Voltron Coalition. There was more of a media frenzy surrounding their upcoming wedding than there had been for the Queen of England’s wedding seven years previously. It was going to be televised, and broadcast live to at least 18 planets in the Coalition.

The door opened and Shiro didn’t even look up. Was it the wedding planner, or one of her approximately three thousand assistants? (Okay, there were only four, but it _felt_ like three thousand when all of them were in the room telling him what he was going to have to do.)

“Why didn’t we just elope?” Shiro asked, feeling like he was about to throw up, “Why did I ever agree to let this become a big deal?”

There was a rueful laugh, and then Keith’s voice said, “‘Because a wedding is a near-universal symbol of hope, and people need that after everything that’s happened!’”

His imitation of Coran was pretty spot-on, and Shiro actually laughed, startled.

“Keith! I thought that I wasn’t supposed to see you before the wedding!” They’d been railroaded into following a lot of old Earth traditions, but Shiro was just as happy to break this one. Seeing Keith settled his nerves.

“I didn’t want to do that one and neither did you, so fuck it,” Keith said with a smile. He held out his hand to Shiro, “Come here.”

Shiro took Keith’s hand and let himself be pulled into a hug. He sighed heavily, feeling a little of the tension leave his shoulders. In all the media frenzy the wedding had turned into, sometimes he could almost forget that _this_ was what he wanted. Just Keith. To spend the rest of his life with the man he loved.

“Are you getting cold feet, too?” Keith asked ruefully.

“Not about _marrying_ you,” Shiro said quickly, “I can’t wait to be married to you. It’s just that I really wish we had just slipped off to the courthouse right after you asked me.”

“Yeah, I understand,” Keith said, “This whole wedding… it’s become such a crazy spectacle that it’s not really about us anymore. So do you want to do something that’s just for us? Right now?”

He released Shiro from the hug and took a step back, his eyes sparkling with mischievous joy in a way Shiro hadn’t seen since before their engagement had become public knowledge.

“What did you have in mind?” Shiro asked, smiling.

“My mom told me that for Galra weddings, you give your intended a knife. You do it hilt-first, so that the tip is pointing directly at your heart when they take it. Symbolically, it shows you’re putting your life in their hands. And you don’t need anyone else to witness it or make a big ceremony out of it, unless you want to.”

Shiro was quiet for a moment, processing that, and then he smiled, “So are you suggesting we elope five hours before our wedding?”

Keith blushed, but nodded, “Yeah. I thought… let’s just get married right now. Then we can go do this crazy circus of a wedding for everyone else this afternoon, since it’s so important to people. But this? _This_ can be something just for us.”

Shiro caught Keith around the waist with his metal arm and pulled him close for a kiss. Keith made a startled noise into his mouth, then returned the kiss passionately. Shiro brought his flesh hand up to run his fingers through Keith’s hair, messing up the styling that some hairdresser had probably gone to a lot of effort to do, but made Keith look less like himself.

“I do,” he said when they broke the kiss, “I mean – yes. Let’s do it.”

Keith beamed at him, “Okay. I brought these.”

He reached into his jacket and withdrew two knives. Shiro recognized one of them as a knife he had gotten Keith as a gift a few weeks after he got out of the hospital. The other one he was certain he’d never seen before, and it made him wonder if Keith had been planning this for a while. He couldn’t imagine when Keith would have found the time to shop, with everything that had been going on lately.

Keith set the knives down on the arm of the chair and turned to face Shiro, flushed and excited.

“So how do we do this?” Shiro asked.

“From what my mom told me, you don’t need to say vows or anything, but… I kind of want to say something,” Keith said, picking up the new knife. He placed it on his open palm with the hilt facing toward Shiro and took a deep breath.

“Shiro, I love you. I want to marry you more than I’ve ever wanted anything else. I want to wake up beside you every morning and fall asleep in your arms every night. I...” he paused, and blushed, “Sorry, I didn’t exactly plan what I was going to say.”

“You’re perfect, Keith, don’t worry,” Shiro said, feeling slightly choked from emotion.

“I – I’ll give you my whole life, Takashi. If you’ll have it.”

“I will,” Shiro said. He took the knife from Keith and, to add his own little flourish, he bent his head and pressed a kiss against Keith’s palm.

Shiro wasn’t quite sure what to do with the knife, so he tucked it carefully into his jacket before picking up the second one. He placed it on his palm – the flesh hand, not the mechanical one, because for some reason he wouldn’t have been able to explain, that felt important – and held it carefully, offering it to Keith.

“Keith,” he started, and paused – he had his vows for their ceremony later memorized, but if this was supposed to be _just for them_ , then he didn’t want to say something that everyone else would hear. He swallowed nervously and started again, “Keith, you are… amazing. You’re brave and strong and determined and I – I think the most amazing thing about you is that you chose _me_. You’re the best part of my life, and I love you, and can’t wait to share my whole life with you. If you’ll have me.”

“Of course I will.” Keith took the knife from him, took a step forward, and kissed him.

It wasn’t the kind of wedding Shiro would have expected, but nothing about Keith had ever been what Shiro expected, and that was what made him so wonderful.

When Keith finally stepped back, he grinned, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Shiro replied, also smiling.

“We’re married.”

Shiro laughed, relief and joy bubbling up through him at that thought, “We are.”

Keith laughed and kissed him again, and Shiro wrapped his arms around _his husband’s_ waist. They stood there for a few minutes, exchanging heated kisses, until the door opened again.

“Shiro, we need – oh, _there_ you are, Keith!” Mrs. Moore, the wedding planner, cried, looking a little flustered, “Polina couldn’t find you and she was getting worried! What are you doing in here?”

Shiro released Keith, only barely holding in a growl of annoyance. Okay, so maybe now wasn’t exactly the time for a quickie, but they’d had barely any time for intimacy in the last two months. Between the wedding approaching and the regular demands on their time as Captain of the Atlas and the Black Paladin, Shiro had barely been able to do more than give Keith a quick kiss before bed most evenings.

At least they’d have some downtime for their honeymoon. Shiro had told everyone that he and Keith weren’t to be called in unless it was a galactic-level crisis.

Keith actually _did_ growl, but quietly enough that only Shiro heard it. He got his expression back to neutral before he turned toward the wedding planner.

“We were just… helping each other deal with a case of cold feet,” he said.

Mrs. Moore looked at him, her gaze landing on the knife Keith still held in his hand, and she raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, “Do I want to know why that involves you holding a knife?”

“It’s a Galra wedding tradition that Keith wanted to observe,” Shiro calmly explained, “I have one, too. We’re going to have these with us during the ceremony later.”

He didn’t phrase it as a question, fully ready to fight her on this one thing after letting her railroad them into so many things.

To her credit, though, she simply nodded, “Alright. Is just having it on your person acceptable, or do you need to hold it in your hand or something?”

Shiro glanced at Keith, who smiled knowingly at him and said, “Just having them is fine. I could just tuck mine into the jacket and be satisfied, because I know it’s there.”

It took a lot of effort for Shiro not to laugh. It felt like they had gotten away with something, and now the thought of the big wedding ceremony didn’t feel nearly so overwhelming. He was already Keith’s, and Keith was already his. This was a show for everyone else, including a lot of people who really cared about them and wanted to see them happy, so they’d go do the show.

“Go finish getting ready, baby,” Shiro said as Polina the flustered assistant came into the room. He gave Keith a brief, sweet kiss, “I’ll see you at showtime, right?”

“Right,” Keith agreed, and let himself be herded out of the room with only an exasperated sigh in protest.

The final few hours passed in a blur, and almost before Shiro knew it he was waiting at the door to walk down the aisle to the altar. His nervousness was coming back, but it was quickly dispelled when he subtly touched the knife tucked into his jacket. He’d already done the most important part, and that had gone perfectly.

Keith arrived, looking beautiful in his tuxedo, his hair in an elaborate braid – there were _flowers_ in it – and, most beautiful of all, his slightly hassled look turning into a smile as he met Shiro’s eyes.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Shiro replied, “You look beautiful.”

The music started, and Keith offered Shiro his arm, “Shall we?”

Shiro took it and smiled at him, “Let’s go.”

Keith smiled at him, and Shiro swore his heart stopped for a moment. This amazing man had chosen _him_. Keith had married _him_. Keith was his _husband_. And very soon the whole universe would know it.

The doors opened, and they walked through them together.

**Author's Note:**

> Keith with flowers in his braid was inspired by [this art](https://twitter.com/LupinChopang/status/1076300560653926401), which was such a cute idea I _had_ to include it in the fic.
> 
> Come say hi to me on twitter @illiadandoddity


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